Obama fired general officers on the night of Benghazi

With the new Ben Rhodes email the Benghazi story is coming back to life.  As was obvious at the time, Obama spun the story, from a terrorist attack to a political demonstration.  The consulate held out under attack for seven hours that night.  Plenty of time to send reinforcements.  Commanders on the scene, General Carter Ham, and Admiral Charles M Gaouette were fired by Obama that night.  No explanation has ever been given.  Rumor has it that Obama fired them when they refused to recall rescue missions en route to Benghazi. 
   I noticed that while Bret Baier was roasting Tommy Vietor medium rare last night, he didn't ask about the firings of general officers with distinguished service records. 
   Put this together with retired Air Force general Robert Lovell, who testified before Congress that "We should have gone in."
  I think the real untold story of Benghazi is that the armed forces  attempted rescue missions but Obama ordered them to stop and return to base.  I think Obama sacrificed four brave Americans to prevent an incident that would have made him look bad, and demanded some serious US intervention in Libya, which he did not want to cope with. 

Microsoft does one more XP patch.

Despite months of XP whines about Microsoft cutting off upgrades and patches, a new "zero day exploit" (hole in Windows just discovered today) is so bad that M$ cranked out a patch for it.  Actually the hole seems to be in Internet Exploder Version 8, rather than in Windows proper, not that it mkes much difference to us users.  We don't care where the bug lives, we just want it squashed.  Anyhow, if you fire up Windows Update, and wait, the Exploder patch will download and install.

Sexual Orientation

We have a push to amend the New Hampshire constitution to guarantee equality (or something) for "sexual orientation".  Not sure just what sexual orientation means.  Is it a new word for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered?  Actually I, and everyone else, assumes that anti discrimination laws already on the books covers them.  Or is it a term that just covers boys who want to be girls and girls who want to be boys?  And what equality does it offer?  I can understand requiring equality in things like college admissions, apartment rental, hiring.  But what about more intimate jobs such as live in house keeper, day care provider, or nanny?
Apparently the NH senate has passed the amendment (dubbed CACR 17) and it's now over at the House. 
   I'm dubious about the value of this one. 

Citizen's ID cards

They used to be a characteristic feature of police states.  Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, North Korea, Red China, the Soviet Union, all issued ID cards, and woe betide the citizen who failed to produce his ID when stopped by the police.  In America we have always taken pride in an open society,  we don't have citizen's ID cards.  When social security cards first came out they were marked "Not for Identification Purposes" just to emphasize that they were for social security benefits only.
   Well that's faded out.  Driver's licenses now have color photos.  You better have yours on you should you get stopped on the road.  You need to show ID to board an aircraft. You have to show ID to get a job.  And now, we are moving toward demanding ID in order to vote.  The democrats are pushing back against this, claiming that many citizens lack photo ID.  This I doubt, everyone has a driver's license.  The majority feels voter ID is a good idea to prevent voter fraud.  Which it probably is.
   But, I kinda like the old ways, when we didn't have to show our papers all the time.  When we put in voter ID we are telling citizens, get ID if you want to vote.   It's a step toward a police state.     

Down with Toll Roads

After 60 years of a no-toll-road federal policy, the Obama administration is backsliding.  They have been making noises that would allow states to put up toll booths on the interstate highways.  Obviously the attraction of squeezing more money out of the people overcame the very sensible principle of freeways rather than toll roads. 
   Travel means business, sales, and money.  It's good public policy to encourage travel and shipping.  Tourists bring money, and spend it, all along the way and at their destination.  Trucks bring every sort of good, which gets sold, for money.  The more goods shipped the more money everyone makes.  It was federal policy that freeways paid for themselves thru the increased business and economic activity.  Discouraging travel and shipping thru road tolls costs us more in lost business than it returns in tolls.
  Despite crying and wailing from the road contractors, US roads are in good shape, much better shape than say Canada.  I drove around the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec once.  It was a major road, a two lane provincial highway along the St Lawrence River.  Only it had washed away to the point that only one lane was left.  You don't see that in the US.  Except for some really beat up roads around New York City,  American roads are better than anywhere in Europe.  We do not have an "infrastructure crisis" except in the minds of state highway departments and road contractors.  Which has been used as an excuse to call for more money for "infrastructure".  Road tolls might provide this extra revenue.  So says the highway lobby.
  I say we ought to stick to the freeways rather than toll roads policy.           

B17 fighter plane?

That's what Fox News called it this morning.  They were covering a decoration ceremony for some WWII Army Air Corps survivors.  On missions over Germany their B17's got shot up and had to crash land in Switzerland.  The Swiss "interned" them in conditions as harsh as a German POW camp.  But since it was Switzerland, not Germany, the airmen were denied prisoner of war medals when WWII was over.  Relatives worked long and hard to reverse this, and this morning the few airmen still alive were presented with their medals. 
   Aside from the Fox voiceover calling the B17 a fighter, all went well.  How anyone could mistake the most famous American warplane, hero of movies such as Twelve o'Clock High, The War Lover, and Memphis Belle, as a fighter plane, reveals much about the shallowness of TV newsies.  And this was on Fox, the best of 'em.  Saints preserve us from what the bottom feeders like MSNBC are polluting the airwaves with.

Get the Feds out of the Mortgage Business

The housing industry, realtors, builders, mortgage lenders, appliance makers, and others, back in Great Depression 1.0 persuaded Congress to give them a handout.  They claimed a shortage of mortgage money was crimping the industry's wings, and housing  was needed to provide jobs and "home ownership".  And so our tax money was channeled into mortgages thru Fannie Mae.  Actually, Fannie Mae made good money for many years.  It borrowed at the low Federal T-bill rate because everyone believed that the US government would back up Fannie's bonds, and it loaned at the commercial mortgage rate, leaving a comfy profit margin.  Fannie Mae even sold stock to private investors, with dividends paid out of the juicy profits.  Fannie Mae (and its younger brother Freddie Mac) offered cushy jobs for retired politicians, and nice profits to investors. 
  In the 1980's Fannie got into, or started up, the "secondary mortgage market".  In this deal, they would buy existing mortgages from the "primary" lenders, mostly banks.  For a while this made money, but the side effects gave us Great Depression 2.0.  The primary lenders found that they could make money on anything, do the mortgage, sock the buyer with hefty paperwork fees to do the deal, then sell the mortgage to Fannie. If the mortgage went bad, borrower skipped town,  property wasn't worth the money in the mortgage, the primary lender didn't care.  He made his money the minute Fannie bought the mortgage off him.  And so the quality of the mortgages went down hill.  Suddenly investors stopped loaning money to Fannie, and shortly after Great Depression 2.0 stalked the land, Fannie got taken over by the US treasury.  $188 billion of your tax money was poured into Fannie to meet it's obligations.
   With this sorry history, we ought to get the Federal government out of the mortgage business.  There is plenty of private money to finance home buying.  Remember, a mortgage is a VERY desirable deal for the lender.  His loan is secured by real property, something tangible and salable.  If the borrower defaults the bank gets the house.  And, the borrower is highly motivated to make his payments.  No spouse wants to explain to his partner why they and their children are getting pitched out into the street.  
   If private investors will buy US T-bills that only pay 3%, they will be happy to make an equally safe mortgage loan at 4.5%.  They will be plenty of mortgage money if we give the mortgage business back to private banks.  And we ought to forbid the selling of mortgages.  When you make a mortgage you will own it til it's paid off.  This will discourage doing mortgages that are bound to fail.